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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 1: Good evening.
Speaker 4: On a cold, windy December night in nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 4: Hell was unleashed on a tenant farm near Farwell, the
Speaker 4: last Texas town before the New Mexico Border. Thrown to
Speaker 4: the bottle in fits of rage, the burly man with
Speaker 4: the smiling blue eyes was in no mo to quarrel
Speaker 4: with his third wife over his bootleg whiskey and sexual
Speaker 4: abuse of his stepdaughter. He went from room to room
Speaker 4: in the house, killing his wife and each child with
Speaker 4: primitive cutting tools and his bare hands. By the time
Speaker 4: he concluded his bloody work, he had taken the lives
Speaker 4: of nine family members, raging in age from two to
Speaker 4: forty one, committing what one local reporter called the blackest
Speaker 4: crime in the history of the West Texas Panhandle. Husband, father, uncle, Embsler, Syria,
Speaker 4: mass murderer, philanderer, child molester, convict, and military deserter. George
Speaker 4: Jefferson Hassel was many things to many people, most of
Speaker 4: them bad. His pattern of familicide crime had begun in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventeen, when he slaughtered his common law wife and
Speaker 4: her three kids in Whittier, California. Later, in Texas, he
Speaker 4: married his brother's wife and became stepfather to her eight children.
Speaker 4: Using Hassel's confessions and as many interviews with reporters as
Speaker 4: well as the trial transcripts and reminiscences of those who
Speaker 4: cross paths with him in Texas, Oklahoma, and California, Mitchell p.
Speaker 4: Roth presents the first comprehensive account of the life and
Speaker 4: crimes of one of the least known multiple murderers in Texas,
Speaker 4: let alone American history. Roth situates hassel saga within the
Speaker 4: nineteen twenties Texas criminal justice system, including the death penalty
Speaker 4: which Hassel ultimately received from Old Sparky the Electric Chair
Speaker 4: at Huntsville. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 4: The Man with the Killer Smile, The Life and Crimes
Speaker 4: of a serial mass murderer, with my special guest, journalist
Speaker 4: and author and professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Mitchell P. Roth,
Speaker 4: Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for
Speaker 4: this interview.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for having me. Thanks, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: First off, tell us how you came to be the
Speaker 4: author of this book.
Speaker 1: Well, as it turns out, one of my favorite courses
Speaker 1: to two each has been on murder, serial homicide, and
Speaker 1: mass murder. And in my early years teaching, I had
Speaker 1: a young man come up to me after class and
Speaker 1: tell me that he was related to somebody that was
Speaker 1: the fifth white person to be electrocuted in Texas and
Speaker 1: had committed mass murder. And I don't think he really
Speaker 1: knew a whole lot about what he did, but it
Speaker 1: piqued my interest because I had never heard of this person,
Speaker 1: and I consider myself an expert relatively on all the
Speaker 1: you know, major serial killers and mass murders. In any case,
Speaker 1: I asked him if he had any records or family documents,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people come up with these, you know,
Speaker 1: stories and can't document them. And it turns out he did,
Speaker 1: and he was kind enough to make a copy of
Speaker 1: what had been gathered by his family members who had
Speaker 1: gone up to the Panhandle in the nineteen eighties, interviewed
Speaker 1: some of the last surviving jors and witnesses, and you know,
Speaker 1: basically had put it into this very short family manuscript.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I held on too it because I had
Speaker 1: a lot of other book projects going, and I kept
Speaker 1: telling myself, this is going to be my next book,
Speaker 1: this is going to be my next book. I finally
Speaker 1: got to the point about three years ago, right before
Speaker 1: COVID outbreak, that had time to go up to the
Speaker 1: area that his family had been to and look for
Speaker 1: court transcripts and go to all the spots and start
Speaker 1: documenting it all for myself and going full throttle on
Speaker 1: writing this book. And as a result, I found a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting facts. I found a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: inaccuracies in the family manuscript. And as I went on
Speaker 1: and on and did further research, which entailed lots of
Speaker 1: newspapers from around the country, entailed you know, even some
Speaker 1: pulp nonfiction, you know, detective magazines from the time period,
Speaker 1: as well as using archives in Austin, Texas State Library
Speaker 1: and in Huntsville the Texas Prison Museum. So I was
Speaker 1: able to cobble together the story of a guy who
Speaker 1: didn't leave my to a pay per trail. He was.
Speaker 1: He was uneducated, but very smart, very cunning, and what
Speaker 1: we know about him, most of it comes from him.
Speaker 1: So whenever that happens, you need to go look at
Speaker 1: the ancestor record. You need to go try and you know,
Speaker 1: find birth records, family records and all of that. And
Speaker 1: apparently there weren't many people in his family that were
Speaker 1: proud of him, and he kind of was lost to history.
Speaker 1: And I have a huge true crime library at my office,
Speaker 1: at home and at school, and I've never come across
Speaker 1: his name, which I'm kind of surprised since he's had
Speaker 1: He had thirteen victims in total, and that's at least
Speaker 1: thirteen when you consider, you know, other killers.
Speaker 4: Now, let's talk about the early years, as you call it.
Speaker 4: He's the youngest of seven children, and his mother is
Speaker 4: Martha Jane Stovell and his father is James William Hassel.
Speaker 4: So tell us where they resided and where their background was,
Speaker 4: and a little bit about what you could cobble together
Speaker 4: about his early life.
Speaker 1: Well, the family, mostly his immediate family was in the
Speaker 1: Fort Worth, southern Oklahoma area, just north of the Texas border,
Speaker 1: and he came from a long line of people that
Speaker 1: work pretty much agricultural jobs, farming and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And it went as far back as I could where
Speaker 1: I could find information, and found probably the person that
Speaker 1: he probably got a lot of his traits from. It
Speaker 1: might have been a grandfather who had been a familiar
Speaker 1: presence in the court system in another part of Texas
Speaker 1: for arson and some other things, but nothing as nefarious
Speaker 1: as what he did. And you know, the most interesting
Speaker 1: things I found was that almost every account of the
Speaker 1: story has his father being poisoned by a second wife
Speaker 1: and him deciding in his young teens to go and
Speaker 1: kill that family. And he admitted this was his first
Speaker 1: impulse to commit this type of crime, killing a whole family. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it turns out, looking through ancestry dot com
Speaker 1: and other sites, the parents didn't die when when he
Speaker 1: said they did. He wasn't out on his own as
Speaker 1: early as he said he was, and he didn't commit
Speaker 1: any murders before as far as we know, I should say,
Speaker 1: his nineteen seventeen slaughter of his you know, first family.
Speaker 4: But you do talk and do have some substantiation of
Speaker 4: his earliest criminal career, So you talk about in in
Speaker 4: nineteen oh seven he was indicted for embezzling fifty dollars
Speaker 4: from his employers. Now, tell us about a little bit
Speaker 4: about his early criminal career and where he ends up
Speaker 4: and how much time does he do.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the results. Well, he ended up he
Speaker 1: was working for a guy that had a gin mill
Speaker 1: up in the Fort Worth area named sid Ross, and
Speaker 1: he became kind of a mentor. I'm sure he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be going to be called a mentor after what happened
Speaker 1: with his life. But he, you know, basically gave you know,
Speaker 1: George Hassel, you know, advice, gave him a job and
Speaker 1: unfortunately gave him some responsibility which entailed, you know, going
Speaker 1: into town to deliver you know, some cotton and you know,
Speaker 1: do some trading. And he had some money that he
Speaker 1: ended up, he claimed. George claimed that he fell in
Speaker 1: with some bad ombres and they spent it all. And
Speaker 1: of course that was the story of his life, deflecting
Speaker 1: his bad behavior on other people as well. But in
Speaker 1: any case, he ended up getting arrested for embezzlement. He
Speaker 1: was about seventeen years old at the time and pushing eighteen,
Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to two years in prison. And
Speaker 1: what this meant at that time was serving this a
Speaker 1: time in the different prison farm units in the Texas
Speaker 1: criminal justice system, and you know these have had, you know, terrible,
Speaker 1: justly terrible reputations over the years, and you know, he
Speaker 1: documents some of the things that happened to him. I
Speaker 1: was very lucky and that I was able to find
Speaker 1: his records in the Texas State Library of what farms
Speaker 1: he worked on, and I was able to figure out
Speaker 1: what his tasks were. And you know, when he talked
Speaker 1: about what he had to do, whether it was working
Speaker 1: on a turpentine farm or cutting sugarcane at these different places,
Speaker 1: you know, this was some of the information I could
Speaker 1: actually validate. But you know it was for very short
Speaker 1: periods at each but enough to give you a taste
Speaker 1: of Texas justice.
Speaker 4: You say that he was released in March nineteen oh
Speaker 4: nine and he saw a recruitment sign. Men wanted tell
Speaker 4: us what he does, what decision he makes at that time.
Speaker 1: Well, he was, like many of his ilk, hit poor
Speaker 1: impulse control, and he would often, you know, make decisions
Speaker 1: and then think about it later. And in this case,
Speaker 1: he thought about joining the military might be a good job.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't really go into a lot of detail,
Speaker 1: but apparently he joined and apparently he deserted several days later,
Speaker 1: as you know many people have done in the military,
Speaker 1: but you know, he becomes a serial deserter essentially. You
Speaker 1: say that.
Speaker 4: Right after that, he goes and looks for a job.
Speaker 4: So he goes to who and asks for a job
Speaker 4: once again.
Speaker 1: Well, he goes back to sid Ross thinking that, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps that he'd done his penance and all
Speaker 1: of that, and sid Ross actually gave him another chance,
Speaker 1: kind of a forgiving type of guy, it seems, and
Speaker 1: he helped set George up on his own farm with
Speaker 1: an agreement that they would split some of the profits.
Speaker 1: George also got married. He met a young lady. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is during this time is sid Ross's employer.
Speaker 1: Evidently he knew the family of the woman that he married,
Speaker 1: and he also was familiar with George's sister, who was
Speaker 1: often kind of his only family member to give him
Speaker 1: any type of sage advice. And anyway, ultimately George did
Speaker 1: everything he could to kind of make sure that this
Speaker 1: situation didn't work, and he ended up leaving to find
Speaker 1: a job somewhere else, leaving the farm and eventually as
Speaker 1: he claimed, leaving his wife and child, even though he
Speaker 1: claims there was an agreement for them to kind of
Speaker 1: separate and they would get back together, but once he
Speaker 1: found a job, You right.
Speaker 4: Though, that in truth they were they saw his abusive nature,
Speaker 4: and mother and child took off to their family. And meanwhile,
Speaker 4: the family had always thought he was either knew he
Speaker 4: was either a freshly released con or just was more
Speaker 4: suspicious of him in general and tried to dissuade their
Speaker 4: daughter from being with them in the first place.
Speaker 1: Well, the interesting thing is that we know probably less
Speaker 1: about this wife than any of the other women that
Speaker 1: played a central role in his life. And anyway, he
Speaker 1: talks about her the most, that she was the love
Speaker 1: of his life, and that you know, they communicated by
Speaker 1: letter once a week, and then she stopped writing, and
Speaker 1: he blamed it all in the family that knew he
Speaker 1: had been recently released ex con and didn't want him
Speaker 1: married to her. Well, in any case, you know, he
Speaker 1: acted like she left him and kind of hit out
Speaker 1: from him, and you know, really destroyed his ego and
Speaker 1: his life. And I bought into this, you know, not
Speaker 1: to get too far ahead on my research or whatever,
Speaker 1: but I bought into this until the very end. And
Speaker 1: I found a letter written forty years after his death
Speaker 1: by his only biological son, by his wife. And you know,
Speaker 1: in the letter he had written to the Texas Department
Speaker 1: of Public Safety saying he wanted to get information on
Speaker 1: his father. He didn't know a lot about him, and
Speaker 1: so anyway, he said the reason they left was because
Speaker 1: they were afraid he was going to kill them. And
Speaker 1: this was right before I turned my manuscript in, and
Speaker 1: this kind of filled in a nice big gap there,
Speaker 1: showing that you know from the very beginning that he
Speaker 1: was a familicidal type of you know, individual.
Speaker 4: Absolutely after this, you write that he enlistened to Navy
Speaker 4: in San Francisco under his real name, and because he
Speaker 4: feared his earlier desertion from the army under his mom's
Speaker 4: maiden name, George Stowell could be revealed through fingerprints. What
Speaker 4: happens as a result of this plan of his.
Speaker 1: Well, he, as I said, he probably joined the Navy
Speaker 1: up in that area. Was that's you know, he was
Speaker 1: in California around this time and looking at you know,
Speaker 1: where the bases were and all that. And he deserted
Speaker 1: shortly after that as well. And you know, one of
Speaker 1: the problems with his desertion record is I couldn't find
Speaker 1: any of it in the military records, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: find it in any of the prison records, because he
Speaker 1: claimed he'd served time in Leavenworth and Mayor Island in
Speaker 1: California and a couple other places. So the only thing
Speaker 1: I could go by was the years in which he
Speaker 1: really wasn't active doing anything else. And there was like
Speaker 1: a three or four year gap before World War One,
Speaker 1: leading up to World War One, where he must have
Speaker 1: been either in jail or you know, on the lamb somewhere.
Speaker 1: But I do believe that he spent two years in
Speaker 1: succession of jails. I don't know which ones was he
Speaker 1: you know, he claimed he was in Virginia, he claims
Speaker 1: he was in California, and without those records, you know,
Speaker 1: you cannot substantiate it. But you know, just from everything
Speaker 1: I've learned about him, I this is what I what
Speaker 1: I assume looking at a lot of different accounts.
Speaker 4: Once he's released from prison, he you righte that he
Speaker 4: tries to reconcile with Minnie, and she was with her
Speaker 4: family in Texas. What happens with this attempt to reconcile
Speaker 4: and what does he do after after that?
Speaker 1: Afterwards, well, he claims that a couple of times he
Speaker 1: tried he wanted to see his son, James Delbert, and
Speaker 1: you know, so he would buy gifts and he wanted to,
Speaker 1: you know, come visit her in the family, and you know,
Speaker 1: she finally let him, according to you know, you know,
Speaker 1: his accounts and others, see the kid as long as
Speaker 1: he didn't share the fact that he was the father.
Speaker 1: And anyway, none of these visits went well, and you know,
Speaker 1: he ended up kind of being ostracized from the family
Speaker 1: and just basically told to you know, hit the road
Speaker 1: and don't come back. And after leaving the Fort Worth area,
Speaker 1: he claims that he ended up in San Angelo, Texas.
Speaker 1: And in San Angelo he met a woman named Marie Vogel.
Speaker 1: I really doubt that this actually happened. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a nice story, but in any case, she apparently had
Speaker 1: a boarding house and he's sweet talked to her and
Speaker 1: pretty soon they're living together. And she had a biological
Speaker 1: child and she was separated from her husband in San Diego,
Speaker 1: and so they agreed to hit the road and go
Speaker 1: to California, and you know, kind of start over it together.
Speaker 1: One of the problems with this story is, you know,
Speaker 1: she's got this kid, and that reminds him also of
Speaker 1: one of his child He's never mentioned as he's talking
Speaker 1: about his road trip and some of the things that
Speaker 1: he pulls along the way where they, you know, try
Speaker 1: to pull these extortion schemes, luring men into the bedroom
Speaker 1: when he's not there and him coming upon them and
Speaker 1: you know, demanding money to allow the person to leave it.
Speaker 1: Just you know this, it just doesn't this bunko scheme
Speaker 1: and all that just doesn't sound right. I think what
Speaker 1: probably happened is he never met her in sant ane Angelo.
Speaker 1: There was no reason for her to be there, you know,
Speaker 1: there was she had no family or friends there, and
Speaker 1: that he probably met her when he went to California
Speaker 1: and got a job working on a ranch where she
Speaker 1: was working as kind of a kind of a caretaker
Speaker 1: mate and had her child there. You know, That's why
Speaker 1: I think happened. It's a great story, like most of
Speaker 1: his stories, but you know, looking at you know, whatever
Speaker 1: records I could find it, there was nothing to substantiate that.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find her in any type of telephone directory
Speaker 1: or anything from that time period in San Angelo, Texas,
Speaker 1: and you know San Angelo was kind of the frontier.
Speaker 1: You know, what is she doing out there?
Speaker 4: You're right that she was born Marie Serlin. Her sister
Speaker 4: was Her sister was Gertrude Hoffman, and she lived in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4: She's a central character in this story as well. She
Speaker 4: said she knew him only as a ranchan named Baker.
Speaker 4: So tell us what happens after with this relationship.
Speaker 1: Well, he ends up on this ranch, living on it as
Speaker 1: a doctor's spread outside Whittier, California, And you know, he's
Speaker 1: basically a ranch hand. And you know, from what I
Speaker 1: can determine, she was working there as well, and her
Speaker 1: sister came to visit and was introduced to him, and
Speaker 1: it seemed they were the only two people on the ranch.
Speaker 1: You know, they were the caretakers, and in all probability
Speaker 1: were a couple by then. And you know, he introduced
Speaker 1: himself as a gee, George G. Baker, and you know,
Speaker 1: basically I was trying to, of course, you know, hide
Speaker 1: his background. And one of the things they needed to do,
Speaker 1: since she was married, was to assume the facade of
Speaker 1: being a married couple with a child in order to
Speaker 1: be accepted there. In any case, they end up getting
Speaker 1: two other children as well, that they supposedly got from
Speaker 1: an orphanage, claiming that they were a rich person, and
Speaker 1: they ended up with these two other kids. And really
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell how they got these two kids.
Speaker 1: Some accounts say the sister brought them them. Others say
Speaker 1: that they got him through some type of orphanage arrangement.
Speaker 1: But in any case, by this time, about nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, nineteen seventeen, him and Marie and these three
Speaker 1: little kids, and they're all under the age of six,
Speaker 1: are living on this ranch. And if the sister goes
Speaker 1: back home, back to the Pittsburgh area and never sees
Speaker 1: her sister again, and George ends up telling people when
Speaker 1: she disappears and the kids disappeared, that they had moved on.
Speaker 1: She'd run off with another guide to Australia or San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and he continued to live on the property that they
Speaker 1: had that they were renting.
Speaker 4: And Wittier you right though, that there was a next
Speaker 4: door neighbor, Missus Shanker and her daughter Myrtle. What did
Speaker 4: she notice and observe a few weeks before this disappearance.
Speaker 1: Well, they had seen George digging under the house and
Speaker 1: in the driveway and that sort of thing. They didn't
Speaker 1: know exactly what he was doing. George would have an
Speaker 1: explanation later on, but you know, basically removing dirt. And
Speaker 1: shortly after they noticed all this, the family had disappeared,
Speaker 1: and he continued to work under the house and live
Speaker 1: in the house. And they asked him, was that they
Speaker 1: knew her a little bit. They would come over and
Speaker 1: visit with Marie and liked her very much, and question, well,
Speaker 1: where'd they go? You know, you would think they would
Speaker 1: say goodbye, And he said, oh, they just took off.
Speaker 1: And this becomes this mantra whenever there is a family
Speaker 1: disappearance throughout the rest of his life. You right, though, that.
Speaker 4: The next door neighbor is pretty persistent and reports her
Speaker 4: suspicions to a police officer. What happens as a result
Speaker 4: of that, She's team points to activity in this garage.
Speaker 1: Right, everything seemed kind of fishy to her, and she
Speaker 1: contacted the Whittier Constable's office and they sent over a
Speaker 1: guy named Bob Way over to the house. And he
Speaker 1: sounds like he just did pretty much a cursory inspection.
Speaker 1: But by this point George had murdered the family and
Speaker 1: buried them under the house and did a very good
Speaker 1: job job of it. He would say that to his
Speaker 1: dying day that he did a great job, you know,
Speaker 1: getting rid of the bodies, and he couldn't come up
Speaker 1: with anything. He couldn't find the bodies or you know,
Speaker 1: anything like that. And he still knew this family as
Speaker 1: George G. Baker. And this would become a problem later
Speaker 1: on when they're trying to parties are trying to you know,
Speaker 1: find George Hassele and Wittier at that time, which they
Speaker 1: would not find.
Speaker 4: So you write that Gertrude, he continues and is persistent
Speaker 4: with police and continues to querry them to what might
Speaker 4: have happened to her sister and the children. However, there
Speaker 4: was no report back from them of any progress in
Speaker 4: the investigation. And as you say, George G. Baker as
Speaker 4: he's known, leaves town, and now he leaves with his
Speaker 4: real name, George Jefferson Hassel. He joins the Merchant Marines,
Speaker 4: as you say, and works in the oil fields. Based
Speaker 4: on your research in nineteen twenty two and twenty three,
Speaker 4: but on several occasions. You write that he visited his
Speaker 4: brother and his large family in Blair, Oklahoma, on the
Speaker 4: ranch between nineteen twenty and nineteen twenty four. Tell us
Speaker 4: about Tom, his brother and his wife Susan Ferguson, both
Speaker 4: nineteen years old.
Speaker 1: Well, Tom was his only brother, and apparently he was
Speaker 1: the closest sibling to him and his rather large family.
Speaker 1: And you know, and since his brother and his family
Speaker 1: all lived on a farm and you know, pretty much
Speaker 1: were very provincial folks and just stayed in one place.
Speaker 1: He would come back with all of these stories from
Speaker 1: California and the military, and no doubt he talked much
Speaker 1: about prison. But he, you know, was a favorite, especially
Speaker 1: among the adolescent and teenage girls in the brother's family.
Speaker 1: And he had by this time, he had eight children,
Speaker 1: and you know, and soon would be his wife Susan
Speaker 1: would be pregnant with it with another child. Well, in
Speaker 1: any case, for some reason, they allow one of the
Speaker 1: daughters to go to California with George on a trip.
Speaker 1: And this is around nineteen two, twenty two or so,
Speaker 1: and she comes back or she stays out there. Apparently
Speaker 1: she's pregnant, and George admits to having slept with her,
Speaker 1: and you know, didn't go into a lot of detail,
Speaker 1: but it was pretty obvious to understand this, and so
Speaker 1: she was going to stay in California and look for
Speaker 1: a husband. In his words, again, she was still a minor,
Speaker 1: you know when this was happening. And he goes back
Speaker 1: and you know, to see the rest of the family again.
Speaker 1: He's very popular with them. He's a joker, he always
Speaker 1: a smile on his face. I mean, he's a complete chameleon.
Speaker 1: He's everything that you want him to be when you
Speaker 1: want him to be it essentially, and you know, on
Speaker 1: these trips back home, you know, really nothing really happened
Speaker 1: of note, except for the pregnancy, and he tried to
Speaker 1: you know, pretend that he had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: And I think his mother, his sister in law, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, believed that he had impregnated her. And you know,
Speaker 1: this was a long running issue. And the brother, you know,
Speaker 1: seemed to be a down to earth, successful, hard working guy.
Speaker 1: He had some health problems at this time, and you know,
Speaker 1: he was well known in the community, and George was
Speaker 1: kind of a cipher you know when he came to visit,
Speaker 1: you know, he was just a you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the brother that was there. And anyway, one day they're
Speaker 1: working in the corral by most accounts, and George claims
Speaker 1: that his brother was kicked by a mule and killed
Speaker 1: and they were the only two in the corral at
Speaker 1: the time, and so everybody you know went by, you know,
Speaker 1: George's count and you know, if you look at the
Speaker 1: death certificate, it said he died from a hernia, some
Speaker 1: type of hernia, and it you know, just it didn't
Speaker 1: sound quite right, and a lot of people suspected, you know,
Speaker 1: that it might not have gone down that way. But
Speaker 1: in any case, there are still others that suggested, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe there'd been some hanky panky between George and Tom's wife.
Speaker 1: Others suggested that maybe they got in a fight over
Speaker 1: him impregnating the daughter. We'll never know, you know, what
Speaker 1: the with the attention and the story was, or if
Speaker 1: he really was killed by the it was a mule,
Speaker 1: actually killed by the mule. We right, really don't know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right, that was a strangulated hernia. But she
Speaker 4: got a modest insurance policy payout, you say, about sixteen
Speaker 4: thousand and twenty twenty terms of money. What is what happens.
Speaker 4: Weirdly enough, we mentioned it in the introduction. What happened
Speaker 4: shortly after between the two, Well, he ends up marrying
Speaker 4: the brother's wife.
Speaker 1: You know, they take a biblical approach to this, taking
Speaker 1: over the brother's family, and she's what's called a Russellite,
Speaker 1: kind of like a Jehovah witness, and they consulted the
Speaker 1: Bible together and thought that it would be okay if
Speaker 1: they married and he'd take over raising the eight children,
Speaker 1: which and this was like three months after the brother
Speaker 1: was killed, and in Oklahoma, I'm sure there was a
Speaker 1: lot of whispers going on, and you know, they felt
Speaker 1: that the best action would be to hit the road,
Speaker 1: you know, with the family and with the insurance payout essentially.
Speaker 4: And where did they go to December nineteen twenty five, Well,
Speaker 4: they end up.
Speaker 1: And you know it's not real clear why they ended
Speaker 1: up there, but they went to Farwell, Texas or just
Speaker 1: outside Farwell, Texas, and they end up becoming tenant farmers
Speaker 1: on a judge's land there. And they're only there for
Speaker 1: you know, they are there for the next year. The
Speaker 1: kids are in school there. He's making his presence known
Speaker 1: in town. He's kind of a loud type of guy.
Speaker 1: He you know, he's someone that makes his presence known
Speaker 1: right away. And I doubt this town had ever seen
Speaker 1: someone like George Jefferson. Hassel and the wife worked hard
Speaker 1: doing you know, the chores that a planes woman would
Speaker 1: be doing, and apparently, you know, they did a good job,
Speaker 1: you know, keeping the property up and all of that.
Speaker 1: In fact, neighboring farmers said, you know, he did a
Speaker 1: much better job than would be expected. And really any
Speaker 1: of his jobs in California, and no one really knew him,
Speaker 1: nobody could really speak to you know, what kind of
Speaker 1: made him tick, and so you know, all of it
Speaker 1: was was that smile of his that was so disarming.
Speaker 4: You're right by the fall of nineteen twenty six that
Speaker 4: the couple is quarreling quite a bit, and he claims
Speaker 4: that she's always taking the side of the children. This
Speaker 4: is a five room house with ten people, and you
Speaker 4: write it. By December twenty sixth, nineteen twenty six, he
Speaker 4: had a master respectable amount of property, including thirteen head
Speaker 4: of cattle, ten horses and mules, chickens, rabbits and hogs,
Speaker 4: and plenty of feed and farming equipment. Tell us what
Speaker 4: Missus Hamlin, the landlady Judge Hamlin's wife. What does she
Speaker 4: notice in on October of nineteen twenty six concerning the property.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the first things she noticed was him
Speaker 1: he had two of his kids building a kind of
Speaker 1: a storm cellar or some type of you know pit
Speaker 1: that he would claim would be for protection, you know,
Speaker 1: from storms, and that sort of thing. Was They already
Speaker 1: had a root seller for keeping things cold and all
Speaker 1: that in the ground, and she was always wondering why
Speaker 1: they needed to build another one, and and then about
Speaker 1: trying to think the family kind of disappears out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: And what led up to that was the fact that
Speaker 1: the wife and George have been quarreling. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the prohibition era. She's very religious and Russell Whites
Speaker 1: don't allow alcohol in the house, and he always has
Speaker 1: a kind of a bit of an alcohol air to him,
Speaker 1: and he goes out in the barn and drinks whiskey
Speaker 1: from time to time. But I think even worse than that,
Speaker 1: he apparently had impregnated another one of her children, one
Speaker 1: of his former nieces. So now he's impregnated two nieces
Speaker 1: that are that are his step kids. And you know,
Speaker 1: he really doesn't want to hear about it. When he's
Speaker 1: going to bed, you know that, you know that he
Speaker 1: has done this. And when he comes to bed, he
Speaker 1: has alcohol in his breath and she basically basically kind
Speaker 1: of chases him out of the room temporarily. You know,
Speaker 1: it kind of starts, it starts the tragedy rolling that
Speaker 1: would you know take place.
Speaker 4: You right that the baby is sleeping with them, The
Speaker 4: two year old Sammy is with them in the bed.
Speaker 4: The children are divided up in the separate five rooms.
Speaker 4: The older son, Alton is away working, I believe. And
Speaker 4: so tell us what it seems happens that night December second,
Speaker 4: and why, well, it seems that night.
Speaker 1: As you noted in the prologue, you know, all hell
Speaker 1: was unleashed. He said he didn't remember doing it, but
Speaker 1: he picked up some type of ballpeen hammer and started
Speaker 1: beating his wife with it once she told him for
Speaker 1: the last time, talked to him about the alcohol, and
Speaker 1: when the baby started crying, who was in bed with her,
Speaker 1: he killed her the baby as well, and he finished
Speaker 1: it all up by strangling them. And so he decided
Speaker 1: at that point that you know, he once he started
Speaker 1: he had to finish the job in his terms, and
Speaker 1: which would mean killing the rest of the kids. And
Speaker 1: so he went from room to room, killing them in
Speaker 1: their sleep, and until he got to two of the
Speaker 1: you know, teenage preteen boys who were hardy farm workers,
Speaker 1: and they gave him, you know, quite a fight, and
Speaker 1: he ended up having to get a shotgun, which was
Speaker 1: the only gun that was used in these killings, to
Speaker 1: kill one of them. But he strangled all the other kids,
Speaker 1: the really young ones, and used razor blades, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was a very personal type of killing spree. You know,
Speaker 1: could have been done much easier with just a gun.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, he was worried that, you know, he
Speaker 1: knew he had to get rid of the bodies because
Speaker 1: his oldest son was supposed to come back the next day.
Speaker 1: Alton was about twenty one, and he would he was
Speaker 1: out on a work crew, and so he had to
Speaker 1: you know, develop an alibi. And all of this explained
Speaker 1: that they had all gone off to Oklahoma, when in
Speaker 1: fact he had buried them all in the pit that
Speaker 1: he had dug. And the question, you know, remains that
Speaker 1: he dig this pit ahead of time. Was this something
Speaker 1: that was pre planned or was it spontaneous, and I
Speaker 1: have a tendency to believe that it was pre planned.
Speaker 1: And since it was kind of similar to his first mass.
Speaker 4: Murder, now he had to wait for Alton, and so
Speaker 4: he made preparations. Then Alton arrives to demonstrate this person's
Speaker 4: diabolical nature. What is the interaction that you write about
Speaker 4: with he and his son, Alton?
Speaker 1: Well, George tells Alton that the family had gone up
Speaker 1: to Oklahoma, up the shallow Water and he would be
Speaker 1: following suit. You know. Some of the explanations he gave is,
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't comfortable there anymore, or this or that,
Speaker 1: and Alton, you know, had a tendency to believe what
Speaker 1: his uncle said. And so they sat down, had dinner.
Speaker 1: George got him drunk. Basically, they played some cards. Alton
Speaker 1: went to bed and he didn't notice anything out of
Speaker 1: the ordinary in the house when he was there. And
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, George went in and
Speaker 1: shot him on his point blank in the head with
Speaker 1: a shotgun. And he would later say he died the
Speaker 1: easiest of all of them, you know, which is pretty
Speaker 1: much true. But at that point he'd wiped out, you know,
Speaker 1: the nine family members. Luckily, the first, you know, the woman,
Speaker 1: the girl that he had had a child with, had
Speaker 1: moved to California, stayed there and found a husband, so
Speaker 1: she was the one remaining member of that family. And
Speaker 1: nobody heard a thing. Nobody heard the shotgun or anything
Speaker 1: like that, and he got everybody buried. And interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: he rather than flee right away, he sent you figured, well,
Speaker 1: I stayed around the last time I buried the four bodies,
Speaker 1: and nobody found out, and I just stayed in the house.
Speaker 1: So he decided to do that here. But I think
Speaker 1: also there was a financial reason too. He wanted to
Speaker 1: sell all the farm equipment and you know, everything that
Speaker 1: he could. He found somebody to take over the lease
Speaker 1: from him. And you know, one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: leading up to this is his landlady, Miss Hamlin, had
Speaker 1: noticed he had some scratches on his hands and on
Speaker 1: his face, and someone else had too, and this was
Speaker 1: after he had killed the family, and he told them
Speaker 1: he'd fallen off a horse into a stubble pile or
Speaker 1: stubble bush and that's how he got them. But that
Speaker 1: was it's the first start, you know, giving people, you know,
Speaker 1: reason to you know, question you know, his story about
Speaker 1: well did they actually leave, and also why would he
Speaker 1: fill that seller in when they just you know opened it.
Speaker 1: And you know, he wasn't responsible for filling it. He
Speaker 1: was just a tenant farmer. So everybody kind of marveled
Speaker 1: at that. But he started advertising a auction that he
Speaker 1: was going to have of all of his equipment, all
Speaker 1: his farm animals and everything. And the auction basically took
Speaker 1: place right over the graves of his family. And you know,
Speaker 1: so you know, over one hundred and fifty people came
Speaker 1: to this. I mean, you know, there's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot to do on the high planes, and these were
Speaker 1: times for you know, families, husbands and wives to get
Speaker 1: together and talk and and you know, share stories. So anyway,
Speaker 1: he sells almost everything, and you know, really nobody's questioning
Speaker 1: anything except the women. There are several women, including missus Hamlin,
Speaker 1: and they decided to go into the house where which
Speaker 1: was supposed to be off limits, and they find suitcases
Speaker 1: full of children's clothes and things that his wife would
Speaker 1: have taken with him when they were going up to
Speaker 1: their new home. And also she left behind all of
Speaker 1: her religious books. So they started, you know, really questioning
Speaker 1: this missus Ford, missus Hamlin. They went to their husbands
Speaker 1: with their suspicions, and then the husbands took it further
Speaker 1: and went into town and talked to a law enforcement
Speaker 1: Let's Jesus as an opportunity.
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Speaker 4: talking about that he has covered up his crimes, he believes,
Speaker 4: but there's a neighbor that has seen this trenches that
Speaker 4: he had built weeks before and noticed this suspicious behavior.
Speaker 1: And the women in there that their.
Speaker 4: Neighbors are also talking to people like their husband's Jo Ford,
Speaker 4: and other people in the community, and they go talk
Speaker 4: to the sheriff, as you had mentioned before the break
Speaker 4: tell us what happens with their investigation.
Speaker 1: That's how they proceed. Well, when Georgia comes into town occasionally,
Speaker 1: that's where the bank is and everything, and you know,
Speaker 1: basically they want the sheriff and the district attorney for
Speaker 1: Palmer County. I want him to come in and just
Speaker 1: to talk to them. And he really seems, you know,
Speaker 1: he's not that suspicious about what they want. Although anytime
Speaker 1: you're called into a sheriff's office and you know you
Speaker 1: get kind of nervous. But he thought he'd covered all
Speaker 1: of us tracks pretty well, and so got to the
Speaker 1: point pretty quickly, you know, where'd your family go? And
Speaker 1: he went with his old story, and he basically told
Speaker 1: them that, you know, that they could telegraph send a
Speaker 1: telegram to a certain person in shallow Water that would
Speaker 1: say that the family got there safely. And so the
Speaker 1: attorney wanted to arrest George, but you know, they both
Speaker 1: got their heads together, the sheriff, Sheriff Martin and the attorney,
Speaker 1: and decided, you know, they would just keep an eye
Speaker 1: on him as he went about his business. And he
Speaker 1: told the bank to let them know if he was
Speaker 1: withdrawing money or doing anything that might suggest he was
Speaker 1: ready to flee town. So they had an eye on him,
Speaker 1: and their suspicions mounted and were finally, you know, confirmed
Speaker 1: when they got a telegram back from the person they
Speaker 1: sent it to saying that the family never got there.
Speaker 1: The family's not there. And Cassel, you know, didn't know
Speaker 1: that this was done, you know, at this point. And
Speaker 1: so in any case, he goes about his business, goes
Speaker 1: back home, he has dinner with the new leases who
Speaker 1: are living with him, a husband and wife, and that night,
Speaker 1: after a meeting with all of the people in town,
Speaker 1: he was starting to, you know, feel the walls kind
Speaker 1: of collapsing on him, you know, that he might you know,
Speaker 1: being you know, danger of you know, being caught. And
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night he yells out that,
Speaker 1: you know, for the guy who's leasing the house to
Speaker 1: come in his room, that he needs help, and he's
Speaker 1: got blood all over him. It turns out he'd stabbed
Speaker 1: himself a bunch and he said, go get the sheriff,
Speaker 1: and go get you know, other the doctor and so forth,
Speaker 1: and so it looked like his attempt to kill himself.
Speaker 1: He didn't say why or anything like that. And obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as this took place, people began
Speaker 1: to put two and two together. Perhaps you know, that
Speaker 1: he felt guilty, or you know, he just couldn't take
Speaker 1: it anymore. So they end up the sheriff comes comes
Speaker 1: in there and with the help and they take him
Speaker 1: to the sanitarium, the Baptist sanitarium and Clovis, which isn't
Speaker 1: real far away, and they treat him and he survives
Speaker 1: all of this. But at the same time, everybody is
Speaker 1: convinced that the secret to where the family is, especially
Speaker 1: once they got the response that they hadn't reached it,
Speaker 1: that they were in the uh, you know, the filled
Speaker 1: in cellar root seller, and they get a group together,
Speaker 1: they unbury the body as they find it all out
Speaker 1: and George meanwhile, he's been treated at the hospital, he's
Speaker 1: in jail. He doesn't know the bodies had been found,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know that someone did not support his
Speaker 1: contention that his family had reached where he said that
Speaker 1: they were going right away. You write that the first
Speaker 1: discovery is the most terrific.
Speaker 4: It's the baby and a baby's arm and up to
Speaker 4: an elbow in a baby's hand, and so the gig
Speaker 4: is up. But he doesn't know, he's not aware that
Speaker 4: these discoveries have been made, and the sheriff wants to
Speaker 4: use the ruse with him to try to get him
Speaker 4: to confess potentially. So what happens as a result of
Speaker 4: this ruse, Well, they.
Speaker 1: Go to you know the jail, and they go to
Speaker 1: you know the jail where he's you know, recovering and
Speaker 1: basically tell him you know again. They go over his
Speaker 1: story and they say, well, you know, we got an
Speaker 1: answer back. Your family never reached there, and you know,
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, he kind of gives up
Speaker 1: the subterfuge and you know, kind of cops to what
Speaker 1: he did. He gives the details, the horrific details of
Speaker 1: what he does in this confession, doesn't he, Yes, he
Speaker 1: kind of relishes, in fact, repeating it over and over again.
Speaker 4: Now, of course the police, the sheriff is making arrangements,
Speaker 4: but also at the same time they realize very very
Speaker 4: quickly that maybe the story of his brother's accidental death
Speaker 4: there might be something more to it.
Speaker 1: Right from the very beginning, George claimed that he wasn't
Speaker 1: even in the vicinity when the brother was killed, that
Speaker 1: he was down in New Orleans waiting for a ship,
Speaker 1: because you know, a merchant marine ship. But he says
Speaker 1: this in quite a few interviews. But then you have
Speaker 1: the other side. There's lots of accounts that he was
Speaker 1: the only person there when this took place, and so
Speaker 1: you know, he protests a little too, you know strong,
Speaker 1: you know, in this situation, and people were wondering that
Speaker 1: he killed the brother. You know, the fact that this
Speaker 1: seemed to validate the good possibility of that, and of
Speaker 1: course it brings into question, well, if he killed the brother.
Speaker 1: Who else did he kill? Because eventually they'll find out.
Speaker 1: You know, the first mass murder was in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: the second was in nineteen twenty six, and you know
Speaker 1: those were his only murders. So it brings up a
Speaker 1: lot more questions as far as the death toll. What's interesting,
Speaker 1: we didn't.
Speaker 4: Talk about how it comes that he confesses to the
Speaker 4: earlier murders of Marie and the three children. How does
Speaker 4: that come about? You tell it, you right about it
Speaker 4: with Deputy Hawkins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's well, he's in the plane view jail and
Speaker 1: you know, they don't have him under a lot of
Speaker 1: security simply he's you know, badly injured. He'd stab himself
Speaker 1: in the stomach and arms and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But he called the Deputy Hawkins in to tell him that,
Speaker 1: you know, basically there's you know, since you know about this, well,
Speaker 1: this wasn't my first rodeo essentially, and you know, I'd
Speaker 1: killed a family of four nine years earlier and the
Speaker 1: bodies have never been found, and you know, most people
Speaker 1: thought it was George was kind of a bragger that
Speaker 1: you know, this is a bit of braggadocio on his part.
Speaker 1: And since this crime had never been reported, so they
Speaker 1: checked with the Whittier police and so forth, and they
Speaker 1: had no reports of a Hassle family missing. They had
Speaker 1: no reports of any people missing at all there, and
Speaker 1: you know, and it's almost like he wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: prove that you know, he was, you know, much deadlier
Speaker 1: than they thought. And so he could remember where, you know,
Speaker 1: where the bodies in the house were. And so here
Speaker 1: we have him in jail, and you know, basically under
Speaker 1: his real name, Jefferson Hassle, George Jefferson Hassel, and they
Speaker 1: can't find any records of him ever living in the
Speaker 1: Whittier area. He was living under the name Gee Baker
Speaker 1: at that time. So anyway, a picture appears in the
Speaker 1: newspaper of him after his arrest, and he's in I
Speaker 1: think the first picture of him was in his coal
Speaker 1: working on the railroad railroad tracks in the oil industry
Speaker 1: in California, and one of his ex neighbors kind of notices,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that our neighbor. And here nine years later
Speaker 1: he's being accused of committing a mass murder. And they're
Speaker 1: kind of putting it all together. And so anyway, they
Speaker 1: reach out to you know, authorities and say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we think this is who the person is, this is
Speaker 1: where he lived, this is Everything seemed fishy the way
Speaker 1: that family disappeared, and you know, they couldn't find the bodies.
Speaker 1: The same cop that had gone out there in nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: The last name was Way. I think his name was
Speaker 1: Bob ray Way. They still couldn't find it. So, you know,
Speaker 1: George didn't like to be called a liar. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the one thing he didn't mind being killed, called
Speaker 1: a you know, a pedophile, a murderer, but don't call
Speaker 1: me a liar. And he drew a map when he
Speaker 1: was in the Walls unit by this time in Huntsville,
Speaker 1: and he drew a map where to find it, and
Speaker 1: they published it in the La Times. In fact, it
Speaker 1: showed where it was. And ultimately, you know, he was
Speaker 1: able to lead them to the bodies pretty quickly and
Speaker 1: validate what happened.
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Speaker 4: Now he we mentioned and you write about all of
Speaker 4: the horrific details that he fills in for authorities, but
Speaker 4: he does not give up the details of the murder
Speaker 4: of Marie and the three kids. He refuses to do that,
Speaker 4: but promises that he will do that at a later date,
Speaker 4: as the state is asking for the death penalty and
Speaker 4: he believed that that might be his fate. Tell us
Speaker 4: about this seeking the death penalty and also his demeanor
Speaker 4: on everything that fascinatingly happens after he is indicted for
Speaker 4: this and is set to be executed.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things that comes up in the book,
Speaker 1: and maybe it slows the book down. Was it talks
Speaker 1: about the appeals process because it took over a year
Speaker 1: to execute him after he'd been sentenced, and he had
Speaker 1: to be re sentenced and you know, getting into a
Speaker 1: lot of the judicial mumbo jumbo. But you know, he
Speaker 1: had no compunction about, you know, sharing the details of
Speaker 1: all his crimes with other prisoners and everybody else. And
Speaker 1: you know, he wanted to make authorities wait until the
Speaker 1: you know, he was basically in the chair before he'd
Speaker 1: reveal you know, all the information on what took place
Speaker 1: in Wittier. But I think the more they doubted him,
Speaker 1: the less he could wait, because he wanted that office.
Speaker 1: He you know, wanted them to say, well, he's telling
Speaker 1: the truth more than anything else. And so he gave
Speaker 1: it up, you know, a lot earlier than he had
Speaker 1: planned to, or the bodies were buried.
Speaker 4: Do you talk about alienists the term for psychiatrists at
Speaker 4: that time, and then also interviews by reporters, prestigious reporters.
Speaker 4: What did they remark and you chronicle some of the
Speaker 4: things that they saw and observed in speaking with him.
Speaker 1: Well, the psychiatrists, first of all, you know, psychiatry was
Speaker 1: you know, still kind of in its infancy, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of dealing with psychopathy and other types of
Speaker 1: mental illnesses. But they basically, you know, once they spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time with them talking about it. They
Speaker 1: would often say afterwards, we have no better idea why
Speaker 1: he did it after speaking with him than we did
Speaker 1: before it. Because he could never explain why he did
Speaker 1: it or didn't want to explain why he did these crimes.
Speaker 4: They tried to portray him as insane, despite him confessing
Speaker 4: to these crimes, and despite maybe the rules of insanity
Speaker 4: being new, what was made of this flea of insanity?
Speaker 1: Well, the problem with it's more illegal than a medical distinction,
Speaker 1: and it's very hard to you know, to prove even today,
Speaker 1: even though you know it occasionally happens. But it was
Speaker 1: more his lawyer that wanted to, you know, wanted this
Speaker 1: at first, you know, George didn't want to say he
Speaker 1: was insane or anything, but he kind of went along
Speaker 1: with it as time went on. Once he was on
Speaker 1: death row in Huntsville, he realized, you know, that his
Speaker 1: only chance of not being executed was to you know,
Speaker 1: you know, claim insanity, and so of course this came
Speaker 1: up with the resentencing hearing and all of that, and
Speaker 1: it pretty much fell on deaf ears simply for the
Speaker 1: fact of, you know, how much planning was entailed in
Speaker 1: this crime and the previous crime, and he was as
Speaker 1: sane as you could be, you know, considering the ability
Speaker 1: to tell right from wrong. Was you know, the idea
Speaker 1: that he would kill himself, you know, over the bodies
Speaker 1: being found. You know, he knew that was wrong and
Speaker 1: having you know, remembered that he had the bodies buried
Speaker 1: and wittier. So psychiatric side of things that, you know,
Speaker 1: never really played out for him. And the thing is
Speaker 1: is when you're sentenced to death, you're given an automatic
Speaker 1: thirty days ninety days you know, to basically be observed
Speaker 1: by psychiatrists and everything. And one of the problems was
Speaker 1: they'd sent him from plainview after he'd been sentenced back
Speaker 1: down to the death row in Huntsville, when in reality
Speaker 1: he should have been kept up in plain view until
Speaker 1: the appeals process played out. So he actually had two
Speaker 1: stints on death row and one of them was shorter
Speaker 1: than the other. But you know, he never really talked
Speaker 1: about being insane or anything. The only thing he could
Speaker 1: say is, you know, he doesn't know why he did
Speaker 1: these acts.
Speaker 4: You write about as well the trial itself and the
Speaker 4: garner the headlines throughout America and probably internationally as well
Speaker 4: at that time. Tell us about some of the highlights
Speaker 4: of this trial, and you and your commentary are one
Speaker 4: of the jury's commentary on the length of the trial,
Speaker 4: length of the jury.
Speaker 1: Process, and then the deliberations. Well, there was a you know,
Speaker 1: dozens of witnesses, but the trial was you know, relatively
Speaker 1: quick for death penalty trial, and the you know, the
Speaker 1: jurors basically pretty much came to a conclusion very quickly
Speaker 1: once they were set to make their decision, and they
Speaker 1: waited longer so that it would seem that they put
Speaker 1: more thought into it, but you know, it was pretty
Speaker 1: much to them an open, enclosed case, and they also
Speaker 1: wanted to you know, there was a lot of animosity.
Speaker 1: There was talk about lynch law and people coming in
Speaker 1: breaking him out and hanging him and that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: although you know a lot of it was just bluster,
Speaker 1: and you know, they basically waited until most of the
Speaker 1: people were gone to you know, from the courtroom to
Speaker 1: give their you know, sentence again of death.
Speaker 4: I found it interesting. I'd never read something quite like that,
Speaker 4: where the prosecutor gives his scathing indictment of George Hassel
Speaker 4: and the defense lawyer breaks out in tears and runs
Speaker 4: out of the courtroom until he can compose himself.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, that was a kind of wacky because, you know,
Speaker 1: once the whole process went down, his defense attorney was
Speaker 1: nowhere to be found, and he was the one who
Speaker 1: was supposed to, you know, do the original appeals process,
Speaker 1: and so this kind of you know, screwed that all up.
Speaker 1: But I think what bothered people the most, you know,
Speaker 1: even more than the killings was his sexual molestation of
Speaker 1: his nieces. And I think that bothered them the most.
Speaker 1: And this came out during the trial. It wasn't published
Speaker 1: in most of the newspapers, but it was in the
Speaker 1: court transcripts. You know, you know, his confession was he
Speaker 1: confessed to all of this. You know, he basically distanced
Speaker 1: himself from the second pregnancy simply for the fact that
Speaker 1: she was, you know, between thirteen and fifteen years old,
Speaker 1: and he was trying to blame it on someone else
Speaker 1: who was on the scene at the time it supposedly
Speaker 1: took place. And any case, this to most people was
Speaker 1: seen as the you know, the worst part of the crime.
Speaker 4: You write that he entertained journalists and other people that
Speaker 4: he was granting interviews till just before the execution, like
Speaker 4: I mean, right before. But they all commented on his demeanor.
Speaker 4: Again there you write about they weren't aware of psychopathy pathology,
Speaker 4: and so they weren't accustomed to it, and so they commented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, they were all they were. They were
Speaker 1: very mystified later on when they you know, kind of
Speaker 1: shared their interviews with other people about how someone could
Speaker 1: be so calm, how someone could talk so how much
Speaker 1: they loved children, which is one of the things he
Speaker 1: was always saying. He just loved children. In fact, the
Speaker 1: first child that he killed reminded him of his biological child.
Speaker 1: And here's a person that could strangle them with you know,
Speaker 1: no problem at all and talk about it later on
Speaker 1: with no absolutely no remorse. You know, people would say,
Speaker 1: you know, they would say, well, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: are you know sorry you did this? You're sorry did that?
Speaker 1: But he you know, there was no mea culp was,
Speaker 1: you know, forthcoming from him.
Speaker 4: You pose the question in the epilogue that why are
Speaker 4: legions of criminals and murderers with much much less blood
Speaker 4: on their hands. Why are they famous and this family
Speaker 4: annihilator is not.
Speaker 1: Well, that's an interesting question. And if the thing is
Speaker 1: is that, you know, you wonder why hasn't garnered the
Speaker 1: attention of so many other crimes. And you know, this
Speaker 1: was one of the you know, questions that came up
Speaker 1: with would anybody be interested in reading this book because
Speaker 1: it took place kind of in an area that really
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of the historical references about,
Speaker 1: but it took place out on the countryside in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, you know, basically, you know, as far as
Speaker 1: a small community, most of the people wanted to move
Speaker 1: beyond that. But no matter what, when you have a
Speaker 1: crime in that area, you know, it stays in kind
Speaker 1: of the DNA of the community for a very long time.
Speaker 1: And you know, and basically, I think that's why other
Speaker 1: people have never heard about this, which is surprising, and
Speaker 1: it made me wonder, well, what other cases are there
Speaker 1: like this? You know, And so I right now as
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my next projects, you know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find cases that no one's ever written about, because
Speaker 1: you know, how many books can you write about Bundy
Speaker 1: and Dahmer and you know, you know, the Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame of serial killers, and but I think that the
Speaker 1: community just wanted to get beyond it because they didn't
Speaker 1: want to be marked by this crime. But it's not
Speaker 1: great for chamber of commerce material and so surprisingly, until
Speaker 1: recently they were doing a play, a local play, a
Speaker 1: theater play based on the crime. And interesting when I
Speaker 1: went up there to start my research, you know, I
Speaker 1: would go into different places, you know, I thought might
Speaker 1: be helpful. In fact, the hospital where he was treated
Speaker 1: where he tried to kill himself as an antique store
Speaker 1: now and they had kept a lot of the hospital
Speaker 1: architecture still there. And I went in there and spoke
Speaker 1: to a gentleman who ran the place. And as soon
Speaker 1: as I said I wanted to talk about the George
Speaker 1: Hassele case, you know, he was ready to kick me
Speaker 1: out the door because people don't want to talk about it,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, talk about a Nobel prize winner
Speaker 1: or you know, prize winning col or something, but not
Speaker 1: about a murder. But I won his confidence, I will say,
Speaker 1: over time. And so anyway, so you know, he shared
Speaker 1: a little bit of information, but you know, all the
Speaker 1: witnesses from that time period are gone, and the only
Speaker 1: thing you have are family members of family members that
Speaker 1: were involved, and you have their you know, their store
Speaker 1: is about what happened, and you know, and that was
Speaker 1: the whole idea of this, is to set the record
Speaker 1: straight and perhaps you know, bring more attention you know,
Speaker 1: to this type of crime, to this crime and the Panhandle,
Speaker 1: and over time, over the fact, more recently I found
Speaker 1: there's a lot more interest in this book up in
Speaker 1: the Panhandle than there is anywhere else, you know, So
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in talks with doing you know, you know,
Speaker 1: lectures and book signings and stuff up in the you know,
Speaker 1: up in the West Texas and Panhandle.
Speaker 4: It's interesting you write about the memorial the basically the
Speaker 4: historical cemetery plots in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Just tell us before I let you go about that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, because of the weather and planes and the
Speaker 1: winds and everything, the original tombstone was very very weathered
Speaker 1: and was falling apart. And you know, basically this might
Speaker 1: have shown too that there was you know a lack
Speaker 1: of interest or you know a lot of lack of
Speaker 1: interest of you know, remembering this particular type of crime
Speaker 1: and anyway, a historical group got together and you know,
Speaker 1: one of the people that I dedicated the book to
Speaker 1: a woman named Teresa and Sira, and she's been you know,
Speaker 1: one of the facilitators for you know, making the cemetery
Speaker 1: look a lot better, you know, cleaning it up and
Speaker 1: getting it with others in the historical associations, a new tombstone.
Speaker 1: And so she gave me a tour, showed me where
Speaker 1: you know, this person was buried that was you know,
Speaker 1: tangential to the crime and it was hard to find
Speaker 1: the cemetery unless you had local knowledge. But it's brought
Speaker 1: you know, more attention to it, and there's been some
Speaker 1: findings you know, of other graves that people didn't know
Speaker 1: existed there. You know, I'm hoping maybe this book will
Speaker 1: bring more attention you know, to the cemetery as a
Speaker 1: historical place, right and in any case, they have a
Speaker 1: you know, a beautiful gravestone there that was donated as
Speaker 1: well as all the help to clean the cemetery.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, I want to thank you very much Mitchell
Speaker 4: p Roth for coming on and talking about your book,
Speaker 4: Man with the Killer Smile, The Life and Crimes of
Speaker 4: a serial mass murderer. For those that might want to
Speaker 4: take a look at your work, do you do any
Speaker 4: social media to us all that?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm in the process of putting a website together,
Speaker 1: but you know, you know, most of the information on
Speaker 1: my work can be found just googling my name or
Speaker 1: going on Amazon, which you know has descriptions of all
Speaker 1: of my books. Absolutely, thank you so much, Mitchell p. Roth.
Speaker 4: The Man with the Killer Smile, The Life and Crimes
Speaker 4: of a serial mass Murderer. Thank you so much for
Speaker 4: this interview. You have a great evening.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Dan, Thank you very much. Night.